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Deleting and destroying finished movies

rogerebert.com

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Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#291

Post by [deleted] »

littlestymaar wrote: post #285
jb1991 wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But in this case, the "napkin" math of 95 years would be off by 200 years! Hardly a useful estimate for this particular topic. Still confused where you come up with 105 years as an order of magnitude from 30.

> But in this case, the "napkin" math of 95 years would be off by 200 years! Which is fine, because 300 and 100 are the same order of magnitude ;). > Still confused where you come up with 105 years as an order of magnitude from 30. 30 ≈ 10^1 105 ≈ 10^2 Here you go.

[deleted]

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#292

Post by Applejinx »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #217
imgabe wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not real losses. They could sell the movie. They could release it. They're deliberately forgoing those options and deleting it. You don't have a loss until you attempt to generate revenue and find that the revenue is less than your expenses. If you just throw your product away, that's not a loss. Ultimately we write tax policy for the benefit of society, not for Warner Bros. In theory, we could write tax law…

>They're deliberately forgoing those options and deleting it. You don't have a loss until you attempt to generate revenue and find that the revenue is less than your expenses. If you just throw your product away, that's not a loss. That is exactly how it works. You already spent X on an asset. If you throw the asset away, then you just have deductible expenses. Same for the widget factory. You can deduct the material…

Taxation is literally and entirely about wresting resources from individuals to serve the larger needs of a society that individuals are unlikely to address.

It's literally there to serve infrastructure and rebalancing needs without which the individuals end up sitting in ruined playpens, drowning in their own filth and unable to do commerce with anybody else.

Never mind about when the 'individual' is a corporate entity that rightly or wrongly thinks itself obligated to chase the most ruinous short-term strategy it can find, as a matter of fiduciary duty. That just exaggerates what already happens with ambitious human individuals.

Tax law is only and solely about forcing people to do what you want, starting with the very concept that people will never want long term thinking or cooperation in any significant way. (in fact, people will want cooperation, but sociopaths, human or corporate, will tend to stomp all over the cooperation-wanting people, wreck their stuff, then want a tax write-off because the stuff they wrecked is now broken)

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#293

Post by CJefferson »

nox101 wrote: post #227
pradn wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does someone have to demarcate exactly where "the line" is to make a judgement on this situation? You can simply ask yourself "do I want to live in a world where this happens" - and any decent person would say "no". The presence of a "slippery slope" is not enough to prevent going down a path, even somewhat. A film takes hundreds of people to create - how does it feel for them to just have years of their lives fa…

Should this apply to everything? Someone buys a cupcake. Instead of eating it they throw it away. Is the person that made the cupcake owed something more than the $ they already got for it because the cupcake was not eaten and so their time fell into the void? How about all the people that built a house or car that a movie production destroys? (less often now that everything is CGI). Also, if the movie sucks, it ofte…

No, but the person buying the cupcake shouldn't be allowed to count it as a loss for their taxes if they made a plan to throw the cupcake into the void when they could have easily sold it.

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#294

Post by leni536 »

tpmoney wrote: post #140
AlbertCory wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the IRS's eyes, you destroyed an item that had value. Its value was whatever someone was willing to pay for it. Say $30M. If you destroyed it, that was your choice, but you didn't thereby incur a loss of $30M. Any more than if you had dynamited your HQ building.

That's not how this works though, right? They're not saying "we think this movie was worth $100 million because that's what someone offered us, so we're going to write off $100 million.", they're saying "We spent $100 million on making this, and we think there's no way to recoup the expenses by releasing it, so we're writing off the $100 million we already spent on it." The "we already spent that money" is the key pa…

If they spent $100M and get an asset out that is worth $30M then they have a loss of $70M. Lighting the $30M shouldn't count as additional loss that they can write off, IMO.

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#295

Post by Applejinx »

dylan604 wrote: post #186
pradn wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does someone have to demarcate exactly where "the line" is to make a judgement on this situation? You can simply ask yourself "do I want to live in a world where this happens" - and any decent person would say "no". The presence of a "slippery slope" is not enough to prevent going down a path, even somewhat. A film takes hundreds of people to create - how does it feel for them to just have years of their lives fa…

> A film takes hundreds of people to create - how does it feel for them to just have years of their lives fall into the void? Very few of those hundreds of people care about the project. Maybe the producer and/or director cares, and maybe the writer. There's a funny shirt that crew members wear with the phrase "I'm just crew. I don't have to know what it's about" that sums up exactly how much they care. Even the acto…

Hoo boy, is this a wild take.

With an attitude like that you will get your lunch eaten so fast, by people who are suffering losses of various sorts in order to get to make their creation their way, the way it's supposed to be made.

That's universal. I don't care whether it's zombie movies or pop music or any sort of thing you think hollow and worthless.

I don't know what industry you're in (tech?) but in the glamour professions where people compete savagely to get to where they're not losing money at the game, those 'hired hands' may be scornful of the director, but it's because they've got their own script that's not being picked up, and their suggestions aren't being followed. And the actor refuses to see the final film because he will lose his mind watching every little fumble of a line, imagining how he should have done it. Surviving this is the inner game of these creative industries.

The times when a crew wears 'I'm just crew and don't care about anything' are sarcasm, protest against a fanatical director who is making them depart from their usual workmanlike habits that they think are how you make a great film that is perfectly fine. They're not advocating for bad so much as they're insisting that they're already the apex of good, that the director is insane and unreasonable. (which can be part of the job description, for advancing the state of the art…)

Nobody who is content to be a hired hand stays in such an industry. You can make more pumping gas, half the time.

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#296

Post by Applejinx »

onionisafruit wrote: post #193
pradn wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does someone have to demarcate exactly where "the line" is to make a judgement on this situation? You can simply ask yourself "do I want to live in a world where this happens" - and any decent person would say "no". The presence of a "slippery slope" is not enough to prevent going down a path, even somewhat. A film takes hundreds of people to create - how does it feel for them to just have years of their lives fa…

Yes I want to live in a world where this happens. It’s a wonderful world even if this particular aspect isn’t great.

How about a world that is awesome and also doesn't pay off corporations to destroy the best work of irreplaceable, dedicated humans?

In all seriousness, why pay them to do that? What possible benefit is there of bribing the corporation to be so wasteful and irresponsible? If the thing is made, what possible justification can there be for this wanton entropy?

Why do that, ever? Signs (that the coyote holds up as the anvil's shadow covers him) indicate that lots of people would enjoy the work, that lots of other people have done. What possible excuse can there ever be for doing all that and then un-making it? It's nihilistic, madness.

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#297

Post by MrNeon »

pests wrote: post #277
MrNeon wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither the resources or the labor are public.

So these companies exist in a different reality where they draw their resources and labor from somewhere else? Where else would labor come from if not the public?

"the public" and "public" are two different things. the labor and resource markets are private, not public.

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#298

Post by Majromax »

konschubert wrote: post #263
AlbertCory wrote: post #22

Where do you draw the line? If an artist pays a model and paints her, is the artist to be prohibited from destroying the painting because it sucks, and because the model wants credit? What about a music producer who pays a studio band to record a song that turns out to be terrible -- is the producer prohibited from deleting it? It's the tax write off for destruction that's fucked up, as @cnees says. Failures are part…

If the market value was nonzero, why would they be scrapping it? They could still count the delta between their production cost and the money they got as a loss and deduct that from their taxable income, no? They have no incentive to underestimate the value of the final product. Income - expenses = taxable earnings. As a business, the money you get by earning a dollar is always bigger than the taxes you pay on it. If…

> What am I missing?

I'm a bit confused about the accounting details as well, but I think the key bit is that a scrapped movie becomes an immediate tax write-off, whereas a released move must depreciate its costs over time.

By writing the movie off entirely, Warner Brothers foregoes the marginal profit from releasing the movie (income less distribution costs, considering the movie itself to be a sunk cost), but in return it can claim the tax benefits now rather than over time. At some implied internal interest rate (where a dollar today is worth more than a dollar next year), that makes sense.

Unless there's some detail that I've missed in the above, Warner Brothers seems very desperate to bolster its current accounting profits at the expense of longer-term financial health.

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#299

Post by DannyBee »

konschubert wrote: post #276
hyperhopper wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That’s they spent 10 dollars to save 3 dollars in taxes? Yes, exactly. You're forgetting Hollywood accounting. Spending 1 dollars to somebody, 9 dollars to your other companies and saving 3 dollars later is netting you 2 dollars.

Well, those other companies paid taxes as well. Plus you can only save taxes if you’re paying taxes in the first place. A company that only loses money isn’t going to get paid. I’m not sure that scheme works work out another trick.

"Well, those other companies paid taxes as well."

This is a bad assumption.

Those other companies are often either incorporated in tax havens, or they have a ton of companies with various forms of tax breaks/incentives.

So where I live, for example, they get transferrable Georgia tax credits during the making of the film. Doesn't matter if you lose money, go bankrupt, etc. It's based on expenses.

Because they are transferrable, they sell the tax credits (They sell for 80-90 cents on the dollar, so buying them lowers the cost of paying your taxes).

So to your middle point, they can in fact, pay no taxes but end up with plenty of tax credits to sell.

Before you ask, earning state tax credits is not federally taxable - it is treated as a reduction in your state tax liability, not as income to the companies that earn them.

(It's a bit more complex than that, but ...)

Re: Deleting and destroying finished movies

#300

Post by dxdm »

leni536 wrote: post #294
tpmoney wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not how this works though, right? They're not saying "we think this movie was worth $100 million because that's what someone offered us, so we're going to write off $100 million.", they're saying "We spent $100 million on making this, and we think there's no way to recoup the expenses by releasing it, so we're writing off the $100 million we already spent on it." The "we already spent that money" is the key pa…

If they spent $100M and get an asset out that is worth $30M then they have a loss of $70M. Lighting the $30M shouldn't count as additional loss that they can write off, IMO.

By that reasoning, you want to force businesses to do something with their own property that they decide is against their interests?
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